While I'm not opposing the idea, I have questions I didn't find covered in https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Xgg6dvg2athdb1h7. TL;DR: I think my concerns can all be resolved with careful rewording.

Please bear with me and analyze this idea: Does the proposed amendment imply that I'm violating the CoC the moment I help someone who runs or supports such a website?

Or to ask the question differently: What are we banning here? The act of helping? The act of asking for help? The fact that a person belongs to a specific group? What a person believes? Am I supposed to check every time I help someone to make sure they don't work for such a website? How can I tell if a website matches the criteria?

The proposal is rather different from how the CoC and especially the enforcement process currently works. Usually the idea is to ban people because of their behavior. But the proposed amendment isn't about behavior: As hinted above it doesn't make sense to ban someone just because they ask for help. Still the proposed wording suggests that "soliciting help" would be the same as "advocating violence or hate speech". This doesn't seem right, especially when the person's intention clearly isn't to advertise their website.

I think the issue here is a conflict with how a CoC works: A violation is always a violation and must be handled as such, no matter if people know better or not. It must be like that. Otherwise anyone could simply claim "I didn't know" and get away. But this idea is not compatible with the proposed wording alone. It becomes actionable only with additional information: Either the person asking for help openly mentions their website, or they spam our support channels. Both actions should absolutely be covered by the CoC, sure. The question is: Aren't they already? Is there really a gap we need to cover with an amendment?

Unfortunately the publicly available information about the processes of the CoC committee and how it evaluates cases is extremely sparse. How does it decide, for example, what the "predominant activity" of a website is? What publicly available sources does the committee use to be sure they have a common, transparent definition of hard to define things like what qualifies as "hate speech"? Do they consult experts? Do they have a catalogue of words and phrases? Nobody knows.

The last significant edit to the committee's FAQ was in 2017.

Personally I would love to have a different enforcement process that – after an initial intervention, if one is needed – then focuses on giving people empathy, time and material to learn, to grow, to become better, and to say sorry. Unfortunately this is – from all I know and was able to observe – not at all how the committee operates. It's about "protecting the space". That's all. It's the reason why – for example – the first time a person might learn they violated the CoC can actually be a public announcement. It's not about the person, it's about the space.

Can we please rephrase the proposal and make it very clear that it's not about the act of helping but about the act of consuming our support resources? "Soliciting" is a word I find extremely hard to understand. According to my dictionary it could seriously mean both "asking for" as well as "offering help". Furthermore, I suggest avoiding the word "help". "Help" shouldn't be used as if it's something negative. For example, no doctor would deny saving someone's life, no matter how many hate tattoos the person has.

Best Thiemo